Over the past two days, Washington managed to simultaneously slow down the main crypto regulatory law, raise the cost of money, and advance a bill that could lock Bitcoin in the national reserve for decades.
At first glance, some kind of political hodgepodge. If you look closer, it's more interesting.
On September 15, the U.S. Senate couldn’t advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act—a bill meant to define rules for the U.S. digital assets market and divide regulatory authority between the SEC and the CFTC.
The procedural vote ended 49–50. To move forward, 60 votes were needed. So even after lengthy negotiations over the bill, there still wasn’t enough support in the Senate.
The next day, the Federal Reserve raised the rate by another 0.25 percentage point—to 3.75–4%. This is the first hike since July 2023. For risky assets, the direction of monetary policy here matters more than pretty headlines about the crypto market.
And almost in parallel with that, the House of Representatives made a completely different move.
The House Committee on Financial Services voted 28–21 to advance H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act. It’s this bill that would transform the current Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, created by a presidential order in 2025, into a system enshrined in federal law.
And here is where the truly interesting part begins.
In the committee-approved version, the Bitcoin that would go into the proposed reserve must be held for at least 20 years. Moreover, that timeframe is tied to the date the law takes effect, rather than starting separately for each coin.
So it’s no longer just about “we won’t sell confiscated Bitcoin.” It’s about an attempt to create a separate legal regime for the government $BTC .
At the same time, the initial text of the bill was substantially rewritten during committee review. For example, instead of quarterly public reporting, it now calls for an annual report on the reserve, operations, and control over private keys with independent cryptographic attestation. An audit of government digital assets is also specifically required.
There’s also another point that’s easy to lose in the headlines.
The bill doesn’t allow Treasury to simply take budget money and go buy Bitcoin on an exchange. The committee version calls for studying options to replenish the reserve without new debt, new taxes, or deficit financing. In other words, expanding the reserve is being discussed, but this document does not create an automatic authorization for government purchases $BTC .
And this is exactly where I wouldn’t rush to call all of it a single “U.S. crypto policy”.
But it's not visible yet.
The Senate couldn’t advance a foundational bill on rules for digital assets. The Fed, at the same time, made money more expensive. And another part of Congress is pushing a law that could cement the government’s ownership of Bitcoin for a long time.
This isn’t necessarily a contradiction. It’s just that different U.S. institutions are solving different problems.
But the change to the question itself is really noticeable.
Just a few years ago, the main political debate around Bitcoin in Washington was largely about whether it was even needed by the state.
Now Congress is discussing something much more concrete: how to legally store Bitcoin that already belongs to the government, how to account for it, and under what conditions it can be used.
I don’t really like the phrase “Bitcoin has become part of a government strategy”—it’s how the crypto market likes to dress up almost any document coming out of Washington. But this time there’s something more important than a pretty narrative: the American state is no longer arguing about whether Bitcoin exists at all, but about the rules for handling its own Bitcoin.
Actually, it’s still a far cry from the word “law” here. H.R. 8957 has only passed committee. Next up are the House of Representatives, the Senate, and a presidential signature.
Washington hasn’t yet agreed on how to regulate the crypto market. But when it comes to what to do with Bitcoin in government hands, the conversation has already moved to an entirely different level.
If you’re interested in looking past the crypto noise and into how the rules of the game are changing, follow @MoonMan567 .
